Evil Dead: The Series 14
by OmarSnake
Summary: A look at Szabo's assistant, Oracle


"Evil Dead: The Series" Episode 14  
  
"Oracles and Portents"  
  
By: OmarSnake  
  
A few seconds before her alarm went off, the woman's hand reached out to hit the snooze button.  
  
She stretched and yawned.  
  
Her name was Oracle... or, at least, that was the name she was known by currently.  
  
87 minutes from now, she would be called on to select a person for her employer to murder.  
  
She climbed out of bed, walking nude through the bedroom and into the bathroom, to examine herself in the mirror.  
  
She was nearly 6 feet tall and thin, almost painfully so, with elegant features, high cheekbones and long, straight hair that went halfway down her back. One of her eyes was blue with flecks of grey; the other, her left eye, had no sign of a pupil, and was pale yellow.  
  
Oracle brushed her hair back, and turned the faucet on the sink.  
  
In 55 minutes, she would bump into a man, who would spill his coffee on her. She looked down instinctively at the arm that would, shortly, be wearing the sleeve that would take the brunt of the spill.  
  
Oracle smiled to herself as she brushed her teeth, thinking about the man she would meet.  
  
She rinsed her mouth and headed toward the shower, pausing to turn on a radio on the bathroom counter. "Good morrrrrning, New York!" she said to herself as she flipped the dial.  
  
"Good morrrrrning, New York!" the radio announcer proclaimed as the station came in. Oracle stepped into the shower, listening to the announcer ramble on about the weather --- such a beautiful day, he said, not aware of the rainshower that was going to hit the city around 3 p.m.  
  
Oracle stepped out of the shower, drying off her hair, and looked at herself in the mirror. In 31 minutes, the man would be apologizing profusely. He would have hazel eyes and a handsome, somewhat weathered face, one that reminded her of an actor she couldn't think of at the moment.  
  
She stepped on the scales and looked down. "One hundred pounds, soaking wet," she muttered as the digital reader flipped, finally hitting on the number 100. She had lost some weight again... a dangerous precedent, and one she didn't intend to let continue. She would have to eat a larger lunch, and see if that would alleviate the problem.  
  
Oracle dressed quickly, starting to choose her favorite blazer, the cream colored one she had bought in California a year earlier, during a rare free moment on a business trip. Then, thinking about the coffee that would spill on her sleeve in 29 minutes, she thought better of it, picking out a navy blue blazer instead.  
  
She slipped on her Rayban sunglasses and put on her favorite pearl earrings, then stopped to examine herself in the mirror again.  
  
John Bacula. Was that his name? The actor who the man who would spill coffee on her reminded her of, the actor who had been in that time travel series. Was she thinking of the right person?  
  
In two hours and 12 minutes, during a break at work while watching Mr. Fisk pulling together some paperwork, she would idly check the Internet and find the actor's name was actually Scott Bakula. Not that this man was a dead ringer for him, just similar enough to be noteworthy as the same "type".  
  
Oracle left the bedroom and walked through her living room, and into the kitchen of her apartment. Her residence was elegant and sparse, with scarcely a hint that anyone actually lived there... it looked more like a show room, filled with black and white furniture and thick white shag carpeting.  
  
Oracle dug into the refrigerator, pulling out some bagels, cold cuts, lettuce and mustard, and made herself two huge sandwiches. She ate them quickly, then checked herself in the mirror and headed out the door.  
  
15 minutes until the man would yelp. 47 minutes until the man known as Lajos Szabo would call on her to use her 'gift' for the first time of the day, and someone she barely knew would die as a result.  
  
She walked out the front door of her apartment building, nodding politely at Henry, the 50ish doorman with thick grey sideburns and a bulbous nose. In four months, ten days and five hours, he would lie dead, clutching his chest, in his small apartment, where he would not be found for three days. Poor fellow.  
  
"Top of the morning, Ms. Gentry," Henry said. It wasn't her real name, but it was the one those in the apartment knew her by.  
  
Oracle raised a hand as a taxi came to a stop, and she climbed into the back seat. "Starbucks Coffee across from the GlobeCo Building, please," she said.  
  
The cab driver, a ruddy-skinned, friendly-faced man with a turban, nodded and pulled out into traffic. Oracle leaned back in her seat, contemplating whether she should tell the cabbie that in two days, his wife would give him the good news that she was with child. Oracle didn't tell him, of course... he would appreciate it more coming from his wife, with the sparkle in her eyes almost giving it away before she spoke.  
  
Oracle looked at her watch. 10 minutes to go. He would be so apologetic, and stammer so endearingly.  
  
There was a small traffic jam, which would have concerned Oracle if she didn't know already the precise second the cab would pull up to the front of the Starbucks.  
  
To pass the moments, Oracle glanced at the cars on either side of her and examined the passengers.  
  
To the left, a blue Mazda. Off-duty undercover police officer, who would be passed up for yet another promotion and quit in an indignant rage seven months from now. He would try to start a private investigations agency, without really knowing what he was doing. Bankruptcy would follow, as would a suicide attempt. Ironically, that would be his salvation, in the form of an understanding nurse. The love of a good woman would bring long-sought and elusive happiness to his life.  
  
To the right, a cab with an impatient elderly woman sitting in the back seat, visibly complaining to the hapless cabbie. The woman would have a debilitating stroke on Christmas Eve, and linger on this Earth for 3 more years, regretting every moment. The cabbie, on the other hand, was going to win a lottery -- not a grand prize, but a $100,000 windfall nonetheless -- and finally marry his girlfriend, an art student at NYU. Until she cheated on him five years from now and he discovered it, they would be happy.  
  
The cab Oracle was riding in made it through the traffic and pulled up at Starbucks just when she knew it would. In two minutes and seven seconds, coffee would spill on her.  
  
Oracle felt her heartbeat quicken as she walked toward the door. She weaved to one side just as a patron threw open he door ahead of her. He barged past, and she slid in through the door just before it closed.  
  
She scanned the room quickly. It was busy, as always this time of the morning. Her eyes fell on a handsome 40ish man with hazel eyes, who was gathering his coffee and bagel at the register.  
  
Oracle pretended to be otherwise occupied, examining a rack of tea cannisters and cups for sale. She picked up one can, of Darjeeling, and grimaced... the last person who had picked up that can had been a would-be pedophile. Oracle dropped the can back onto the rack before she had any stronger insight into the mind of the cretin, but took mental note of his name so she could anonymously report him to the police, while he was still fixated on pornography and had not yet harmed a child in real life. She turned, to head away from the rack and avoid anything else he might have touched....  
  
And she ran into the handsome man with hazel eyes. His coffee spilled on her sleeve, and he yelped instinctively, reaching out to steady her so she didn't fall down.  
  
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," he said. "Are-- are you alright? Oh, I'm so sorry." He started to dab at her arm with his napkins, then realized his impertinence and smiled apologetically.  
  
Oracle looked into his eyes.  
  
It was their introductions to each others' worlds. Two strangers, who had lived for decades separately just to reach this point, the moment their lifelines would cross over one another. He would offer to buy her a coffee, and get a refill himself, and they would sit and talk until she had to go to work. They would arrange to meet again, just for a casual lunch.  
  
Which would lead to him clumsily asking her out on a date. His name was John Sinclair, and he was an architect and the recent survivor of a divorce, from his childhood sweetheart. He would explain, trying not to place blame, that the marriage had simply fallen apart; Oracle, of course, would know that his wife had turned cold and hurtful, a punishing woman who blamed John for her own shortcomings.  
  
A first date with John would lead to a second, and a third, and a fourth, at the end of which they would finally make love. He would be a tender lover, uncertain in the arms of a woman he desperately wanted to please and prove himself to. Their first night together would be a bit awkward, but Oracle would gently encourage him to be more confident and self-assured. And he would open her world as well, with gentle touches and reminders that she was more than just an automaton, working for a diabolical goal.  
  
Three months and two days from now, they would move in together, and five weeks after that, on her birthday, Oracle would receive an engagement ring as a gift from John, hidden in a cup of coffee.  
  
She would accept on the spot. But the next day, John would not return from work. And when Oracle went to find him, she would find out that he had never shown up at the office that day.  
  
As she tried to find him, worrying about why her psychic abilities could not track her lover down, she would receive a call on her cell phone. The call would be from her employer, and the man who gave her the ability to see the future in the first place, Lajos Szabo.  
  
He would explain that he did not like distractions, and felt that John Sinclair was taking his trusted oracle's attention away from the work at hand, and that she was not allowed the luxury of a private life. John Sinclair no longer existed, and there was no need for her to think of him again.  
  
Oracle's mind snapped back suddenly to the present, and to John as he offered to buy her coffee, and perhaps sit a moment and talk. There was a hopeful glimmer in his eyes.  
  
"No, thank you," Oracle said somberly, then turned and walked out of the Starbuck's without getting anything to drink.  
  
She glanced back over her shoulder at the disappointed man, then Oracle wiped at the corner of her eye as she headed across the intersection and into the lobby of the GlobeCo Building.  
  
In 27 minutes, Lajos Szabo would buzz for her, and ask her to focus her abilities on learning which of his security guards had been most directly at fault in the lab escape from the night before.  
  
Five men, three with children, one caring for an elderly mother, and the fifth not responsible for the mistake in the least. And she would be asked to pick which one Szabo would casually murder as a lesson to the others.  
  
Some days, Oracle hated her job. 


End file.
